Ronald W. Smith, age 82, died on Friday, April 5, 2019, at his home in Marshfield. Those in town might know the house he took so much pride in, located on Forest Street across from the high school playing fields, and, until just a couple of years ago, might even have seen a man standing on a ladder, staining the shingles one last coast of weathering gray, or even leaning across scaffolding on the roof to touch up the green exterior trim around one of the bedroom windows. Few things pleased him more than when strangers sometimes stopped to say how beautiful they thought the cape and yard were, or asked about the gold-leafed eagle beside the front door. Some decades ago, late-night drivers might have wondered about the man silhouetted on many a summer night in the brightly illuminated garage, but anyone who had the window down ad passed slowly enough would have heard the radio broadcasting the ball game. Although he grew up in Red Sox territory, he fell in love with the Yankees as a boy growing up in the 1930s and 40s, following the team as they won World Series after World Series. Even when the winning streak slowed, even as an adult with a tedious daily commute into Boston, he listened to the games on the radio until the wee hours of the morning, cigarette in hand, in the garage, unable to turn in for the night until he'd heard the final score from an extra-innings game on the west coast.

He lived in the decades when a man could begin and end his career at the same firm. Newsletters published by the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company reveal him in small black-and-white photos among announcements of those recently promoted, and note that he began work there in 1959 after graduation from Boston University, moving from a programmer in his early years, when coding was all zeros and ones, to a vice-president when he retired in the 1990s. He also completed executive training programs at Columbia University and Williams College. He did not talk much at home about what his work entailed, but he used to bring home stories for his children about the men whose job it was in the 1970s to patrol the sidewalks on the lookout for panes of glass that might fall from the newly constructed tower. His coding responsibilities found their way into the house on Forest Street in the accordion reams of continuous stationery he brought home for his children to use as scrap.

He was most content when using his hands to build. That is why the house meant so much to him. Close to the building line at the front of the property he built a small structure topped with a weathervane. That was his woodworking shop. It is quite a small marvel of order: jars and jars of nails and screws organized by type and size, rows of hammers and screwdrivers suspended from the walls. Though at some point he acquired a heavy modern table saw, pride of place went to his grandfather's saws with their hand-carved handle grips and tiny triangular teeth filed and precisely tipped in alternation down he metal blade. These teeth, like so many things, he cared for and maintained. Here in the shop he found enjoyment, breathing in a swirl of sawdust, shuffling through a blanket of tiny wood chips. He was a man who loved measurement and the ways things could be precisely fit together. Sometimes that precision meant mitering the corners of wooden frames or chests; sometimes it meant hefting small boulders with all their unyielding shape into the stonewalls that delineated the yard. To quote Robert Frost, he was a believer that "good fences make good neighbors." He tried to make those fences works of art.

His home and the homes of his children are filled with what he hand-crafted from pine – tables, chests and bookcases. A most characteristic gesture of his, and one that is preserved in these pieces of furniture: the way he gripped the sandpaper between fingers gnarled by rheumatoid arthritis, then gently slid the edge of a crooked pinky finger and palm over the wood to find the smoothness. Those hands largely sum him up. That he managed to make such beautiful objects with such damaged joints was evidence to him of the way that personal responsibility, grit and determination were most essential to achievement of any kind in life.

In his wife of nearly 54 years, Patricia Smith, he found a partner whose artistry with paint complemented his furniture making skills. Together they were a team. Circumscribed though his world became in the last month and a half of his life, limited to the first floor living room, kitchen and bathroom, he looked around and admired much of what they had crafted together. Sitting in the kitchen, he could run his hand across the table he made nearly five decades ago, observing the way the stain had edged the knots into sharpness, and look at the walls he painted and his wife had stenciled with red leaves. In addition to a loving wife, he leaves behind two children, Andrea Smith-Yahia and Matthew Smith; and three grandsons, Jean-Christophe and Philippe Yahia, and Nolan Smith. One of the last times he spoke to his daughter, he said he thought about his grandchildren all the time, every day, loved them, and hoped for their bright futures.

Behind the house is a vegetable garden he and his wife plowed and planted every year. It was the site of many a battle with woodchucks as well as the site of an annual burning. There is a pile there that now needs burning. This past autumn when he collected the fallen branches and dragged them into a heap, he was still picturing himself out there in the spring, seated and presiding over the flames and smoke.

Calling hours will be held on Thursday evening between the hours of 5 to 7 at the MacDonald Funeral Home, at 1755 Ocean Street in Marshfield. A Memorial Service will be held in the North Community Church at a later date.